McBickle Eyes the Transom

This Is My Dog.

2011-03-18T13:37:00.000-04:00

This is AMERICA.

2011-02-15T13:17:00.006-05:00

Mza: How was your Valentine’s Day?

McBickle: Cuckoo and great. We went to Koreatown. It was wild. Then we tried to see a peep show. Then we wandered through the weird gross Hotel Pennsylvania. Then we went to a 3-D IMAX movie about CAVES.

Mza: Weirdest V day ever.

McBickle: YES.

Mza: Fun?

McBickle: YES.

Mza: Great! You were unsuccessful in seeing peep show?

McBickle: Yes.

Mza: Why? This is AMERICA.

McBickle: Well, there were very sketchy men lingering and everything seemed covered in semen, so we perused the massive dildos and left.

Mza: Yeah, isn't there a peep show for women? Guess not.

McBickle: Not in the 32nd st grossness we wandered into.

Mza: Yeah, yeccchh.

McBickle: Yup. There were like dollar booths and there were videos, not live nude girls. So I was disappointed anyway.

Mza: Yeah, stoops.

McBickle: This convo is worth blogging.

Mza: Where'd you go in Koreatown? I never know where to go in Koreatown.

McBickle: I dunno what it was called.

Mza: Was it Valentines-y?

McBickle: Yes! And scary! That movie was terrifying!

Mza: And you had to cling to each other out of fear, etc...

McBickle: YES. No joke. Like, fucking frightening.

Mza: How many people went to see movie about caves on V day?

McBickle: Us and some very nerdy teens.

Gulpfaced fish

2011-01-08T16:24:00.001-05:00

They stood and stared at me like a bag of gulpfaced fish.

Space

2010-12-21T14:19:00.003-05:00

“Space, baby, space,” I said as I leaned into her silken arms. The moon hung brownish red and blurred in my poor prescription glasses but I knew what it was all the same—this was the eclipsed moon that begins the cycle under which we will marry. It’s not astrology I believe in, it is the act of peering into the night sky, of dreaming of stars and the texture of the space between them. It’s what we both did as children and did again together last night. In this act forevermore, we will find our minds reaching toward the dark in concert, holding hands, winding through the byways of time.

This Is Now

2010-11-18T15:01:00.000-05:00

My grandmother is dying. She is on a morphine drip and has been “taken off things.” She goes and I have not seen her in years. Many years. For reasons that I know she does not understand and now never will but never would anyway. I do not know her—what her interior consists of, what she thinks of the world or what her life has been like. She doesn’t know me, but loved me in her way and I loved her back in the way that we love our flesh and blood when it is only flesh, only blood. That and the memories of a kind soft-skinned woman in my very young years before it all went wrong and I lost a sense of where the adults were who could hear a child speak.

And I am getting married. This weekend I am supposed to go with my future wife to Massachusetts to find a place for our wedding and now I feel a split cleaving myself between New York and New England, my past and my future, my suffering and my happiness. This is a life I am living, and these are choices I will make and there is no going back, ever. I see that now.

I Biked 30 Miles to This Wedding

2010-09-07T16:18:00.000-04:00

Because It's Summer in New York

2010-07-26T17:01:00.000-04:00

Irony!

2010-06-15T13:59:00.000-04:00

Ladyfriend: I'm trying to figure out how to serve an attorney who's dead.

McBickle: Hahaha sorry.

Ladyfriend: Hahaha yea.

Rutilated

2010-06-08T15:46:00.001-04:00

Rutilated.

Meditations on the Dumbest Terrorist Ever

2010-05-05T15:07:00.001-04:00

2:55 p.m.

McBickle: http://gawker.com/5531816/faisal-shahzad-total-tourist

Former Fake Boyfriend: Incredible.

McBickle: How the hell did they find that?

FFB: He has a lot of stuff on social networks.

McBickle: Oh weird. He's the dumbest terrorist ever.

FFB: Thankfully, yes.

10:46 a.m.

McBickle: this is the most compelling thing about the car bomber: “He said he spoke Urdu, English and Pashto and liked to work on computers, play sports and ‘talk to people from different backgrounds.’” The last part—right? Like, WTF. You like talking to people of different backgrounds? You DO?

FFB: Hahahahahahah. I know. Being in foreclosure to me is fascinating.

McBickle: GF and I were discussing, like, is it an opposite? A lie? Wait, why?

FFB: To me.

McBickle: Why? Curious.

FFB: Makes him like so many other people. I think terrorism and an inflated housing market are the two biggest stories of our lives. So this has both…and you wonder how people become radicalized.

I Saw This From the Gym

2010-04-25T23:45:00.000-04:00

I Went to the Yucatan. This Is My Head.

2010-04-02T11:20:00.001-04:00

From "Medicina Rossa + Sequenza Blu/Verde"

2010-03-10T11:53:00.001-05:00

(From this series by Alberto Seveso.)

Estimated Arrival of Tsunami Times Off the Coast of Chile Today

2010-02-27T14:11:00.001-05:00

Probably.

2010-02-08T16:06:00.000-05:00

Sparkle: I'm going to Puerto Vallarta in two weeks.
McBickle: Ooh I've been there—gorgeous.
Who you going with?
Sparkle: Was supposed to be my big brother's wedding
but he postponed it.
McBickle: Why?
Sparkle: Not sure.
McBickle: Seems inconvenient.
And...odd.
Sparkle: Yeah.
She's a whore.
Probably.

Silence Made Visible

2010-01-21T10:13:00.002-05:00

"It was late at night, long past midnight. The silence appeared so rich as to have a visual quality, a sparkle or hard gloss, and a thickness too, like fresh paint. This synethesia must have been due to my disorientation, for this was so familiar, lying here in the green field of her stare, feeling her smooth thin arms."

—Ian McEwan, Enduring Love

Tailoring for Men and Woman

2010-01-10T13:09:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year From My Totem

2009-12-31T10:36:00.004-05:00

I saw this huge bird outside my kitchen window this morning. I immediately thought, "Falcon," but maybe it was a red-tailed hawk?

I took the first photo with its back to me then on my second shot the stupid flash went off and it flew away.

Here's the meaning if it's a falcon (according to whatever Internet loon):

"At its core, the Falcon represents visionary power, wisdom, and guardianship. This powerful bird awakens visionary power, and leads you to your life purpose. The Falcon carries with it a message of transition and change – perhaps in your vocation, work, career, etc. The fact that this Peregrine chose to show itself to you is a powerful message in itself. This is a call for you to pay attention to the your performance, your function, your actions."

And if a red-tailed hawk:

"To accept this Totem, is to be knighted as a Guardian and Protector of the Earth Mother and all her Children, to possess an astute awareness of the interconnectedness of all things, and an inner reverence for all life. These are the souls that are involved in making the world a better place. They will be protectors of the Earth, encouraging and educating Others to do the same. Does the Red Tail appear and Shadow you from day to day? If so, What message did it reveal?"

A Nude Maori Pygmy

2009-12-01T12:39:00.002-05:00

McBickle: I dreamed last night I was dating and dumped by that girl from Twilight.

GF: Hehe. Ew.

McBickle: She was pretty in the dream.

GF: I dreamt that [ex-girlfriend] was dating a pygmy, a nude Maori pygmy.

GF: And you and I were hanging with them and were all like, "Umm yeah, he's...cool." And she was like, "It’s so cute, he trembles when he's excited... and the sex is...gooood." And you and I were like, "We should go."

A doglikedog

2009-11-19T12:18:00.003-05:00

The air is spitty and my love is unhappy at home under a fuchsia quilt and my throat is pulsing with the beginnings of a flu but I am able to concentrate and make essays about Africa cohere today when I am not writing this, which, really, is better than not being able to like I was unable to yesterday, isn’t it now.

Here’s a doglikedog I saw in the post office on Saturday while I was picking up a 1,045 page book by Thomas Pynchon that I may read at some unknown future point as well as a novel by Laurie Moore. The post office has a miserable little lobby that radioactivates small, four-legged animals, maybe.

1920s Boat Ride Around NY Harbor

2009-11-09T11:08:00.007-05:00

I Just Awoke From This Dream

2009-11-08T10:55:00.006-05:00

We were picked up for not having passports in Iran. We were held with fear, not beatings—just deprivation of reassurance and threat that we were in trouble far greater than we knew. We were afraid. At one point, a group of raucous dark-haired Argentineans was held in the next room and I succinctly said to them, “Tell the embassy: We are American journalists.” I felt quite proud I had mouthed the correct words in my narrow window of communication. It was then a fellow prisoner told me that they, these Argentineans, too, would remain in this jail, and why would I think they could help us? I realized she was right and felt impotent again.

The woman jailer came to us and said we would be moved to a place far worse than this. That if we think we’d had it bad, we had no idea what was coming. She looked like a masculine gym teacher I had as a young teenager—hair in a mat of heavy curls cut close to her head. We would be making crowns of thorns, like Jesus wore, not to wear, but for others. And if we think it would not destroy our hands with each prick and cut, we would soon see what a torture this construction would become, that each thorn would tear at our hands’ meat and slice like razors across our fingers and palms. I become more afraid, but resolve I can do it.

We are sent to a road to wait for a bus to move us, only when two large dirty-white cars arrive, our fellow Iranian tells us these are Special Security vans, meant for our subtle, they-will-look-the-other-way escape across the border. We pile in and drive fast. Only the scenery becomes rocky and forested, and we realize we are still being held, only now in a wilderness in which we would die of thirst and hunger if we could not find our way. Green spreads far and thin but holds chunky gray-white rocks in ragged groupings. The close-cut grass is a yellow-blue coat across the earth that lulls me.

But I would soon lose my socks and shoes and shed my jacket without remembering how. I would chill upward from my toes. I would regret that my camera remains at my apartment with all the photos I have taken on this trip before now.

We come across a huge pool in the woods in which a movie is being filmed. I see John Lithgow and realize he is the person to tell we need help. We wade uncomfortably, watched by the crew, the actors, the grips and lighting guys, through the chlorinated water and I whisper as we pass John, “We are Americans. We are journalists. Tell them.” He seems startled but maybe understands.

I see my black dog drinking heavily from the pool, and fear his poisoning, but know his thirst. I realize then the heaviness our families will feel must be beginning as they finally know we are stuck without charge in Iran, possibly tortured. I worry we have been released too soon, that we will be ridiculed for scaring them, that my detention will not matter enough among the dozens of journalists held for prolonged periods in this country. I realize then that as long as we have made it out, it does not. We go onward, to Iraq.

Commands in Hand

2009-11-06T14:27:00.006-05:00

I have been told I must spend this $10 bill on a cab to dinner. It was nestled in an empty cigarette carton, the first pack of cigarettes I’d bought in months. I bought them on a night of a fight—smoked one. The following night, last night, they sat on my couch, hiding under a few envelopes of solicitous junk mail, and one catalogue. This morning, I chucked them into my bag along with matches I’d gotten free at a deli in Brooklyn while crying.

“Did you smoke another cigarette?” Girl asks me.

“No,” I say.

“Look in the box then,” she says.

I do. I find the bill and no cigarettes.

“Read the note,” she says.

I do. She loves me.

Now I am supposed to spend the ten in a cab to go on a date to celebrate an anniversary: “It is all part of an elaborate plan,” she says. “You have to put it back out in the world.”

I argue, assuming this will be a hard bit of paper to part with. But I believe in her, and I will do it.

Seventh Avenue and 29th Street, Morning Commute

2009-11-03T10:02:00.002-05:00

9:42 a.m.

Or a Puppet

2009-10-16T11:15:00.000-04:00

Mza: WTF. That's an emoticon not an animal.

Constructing

2009-09-25T12:37:00.008-04:00

The sun goes down earlier now. This was taken at just before 8 p.m. as I walked home the other night. There are men working within that scaffolding. With those startling lights, I felt like I’d come upon an Italian carnevale, something like San Genarro. I stood too far into the street with cars approaching to show you this.

The carapace held these hammering men so neatly. It was like a mini-house turned inside-out.

Gaddafi interpreter 'collapsed during UN speech'

2009-09-25T11:02:00.001-04:00

From the U.K.'s Times:

A Libyan interpreter brought over by Muammar Gaddafi to translate his speech at the United Nations General Assembly collapsed 75 minutes into the rambling diatribe, it has emerged.

Visiting dignitaries usually rely on the UN's highly professional team of interpreters but the Libyan leader brought his own expert linguists to translate his speech into English and French, saying that the UN's Arabic language interpreters would not be able to understand his Libyan dialect.

In the event, according to the New York Post, Colonel Gaddafi spoke in standard Arabic - but still got lost in translation. An hour and a quarter into the speech his interpreter shouted into the live microphone in Arabic: "I just can't take it any more."

At that point, the UN's Arabic section chief, Rasha Ajalyaqeen, took over and translated the final 20 minutes of the speech.

"His interpreter just collapsed – this is the first time I have seen this in 25 years," another UN Arabic interpreter said.

Ms Ajalyaqeen was given the next day off.

"Ten minutes with Gaddafi earns you a lot of annual leave," one of her colleagues said.

Subject Message: 'WTF?'

2009-09-24T14:07:00.001-04:00

MLP is on an 18-mile run in Pennsylvania. She is sending me photos she takes along the way. She just sent me…this:

'One of Us Is the Monkey.'

2009-09-16T12:22:00.002-04:00

I sent MLP the following image with the caption: "One of us is the monkey."

She replied with the following image, saying: "Clearly, I am the monkey...look closer..."

I Am Trying to Get a Package. Kafka Has Rerouted It.

2009-09-11T10:56:00.001-04:00

Please, read from the bottom up.

NEW YORK, NY, US 09/10/2009 11:03 P.M. EMERGENCY CONDITIONS BEYOND UPS' CONTROL / DELIVERY RESCHEDULED [Lady on the phone wonders if there are bad weather conditions or something else happening in New York, 'cause, like, she's not in New York. No, I tell her, no, there are not. It's rainy this morning though, thanks for asking.]
09/10/2009 10:07 P.M. DESTINATION SCAN
09/10/2009 8:00 P.M. EMERGENCY CONDITIONS BEYOND UPS' CONTROL
NEW YORK, NY, US 09/09/2009 11:55 P.M. EMERGENCY CONDITIONS BEYOND UPS' CONTROL / DELIVERY RESCHEDULED
09/09/2009 10:00 P.M. DESTINATION SCAN [I run into the UPS guy in the elevator. He ponders said "emergency." He thinks it has something to do with our freight elevator being broken. The package I am awaiting, it is small.]
09/09/2009 8:12 P.M. EMERGENCY CONDITIONS BEYOND UPS' CONTROL
09/09/2009 7:31 A.M. OUT FOR DELIVERY
09/09/2009 5:40 A.M. ARRIVAL SCAN
MASPETH, NY, US 09/09/2009 5:11 A.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
09/09/2009 12:24 A.M. ARRIVAL SCAN
BROOKLYN, NY, US 09/08/2009 11:40 P.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
09/08/2009 1:00 A.M. OUT FOR DELIVERY
09/08/2009 1:00 A.M. THE DELIVERY INTERCEPT REQUEST FOR THIS PACKAGE WAS SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED / THE ADDRESS HAS BEEN CORRECTED. THE DELIVERY HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED [You know, send it to my office.]
09/08/2009 12:59 A.M. THE APARTMENT NUMBER IS MISSING OR IS INCORRECT. UPS IS ATTEMPTING TO OBTAIN THIS INFORMATION. / THE EXCEPTION WAS OVERRIDDEN AND A NEW EXCEPTION WAS CREATED.
09/04/2009 10:17 A.M. THE SHIPPER HAS REQUESTED A DELIVERY INTERCEPT FOR THIS PACKAGE / DELIVERY TO AN ALTERNATE ADDRESS WAS REQUESTED
BROOKLYN, NY, US 09/03/2009 11:43 P.M. THE APARTMENT NUMBER IS MISSING OR IS INCORRECT. UPS IS ATTEMPTING TO OBTAIN THIS INFORMATION. / A POSTCARD HAS BEEN SENT TO THE RECIPIENT REQUESTING THAT THEY CONTACT UPS.
09/03/2009 5:10 P.M. THE APARTMENT NUMBER IS MISSING OR IS INCORRECT. UPS IS ATTEMPTING TO OBTAIN THIS INFORMATION. [I do not have an apartment number, just FYI.]
09/03/2009 7:04 A.M. OUT FOR DELIVERY
09/03/2009 6:27 A.M. OUT FOR DELIVERY
09/03/2009 6:09 A.M. ARRIVAL SCAN
PHILADELPHIA, PA, US 09/03/2009 3:05 A.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
PHILADELPHIA, PA, US 09/02/2009 10:24 P.M. ARRIVAL SCAN
LAWNSIDE, NJ, US 09/02/2009 9:31 P.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
09/02/2009 7:24 P.M. ORIGIN SCAN
US 09/02/2009 8:22 P.M. BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED
Tracking results provided by UPS: 09/11/2009 10:52 A.M. ET

Everything Forms Inside If You Let It

2009-09-01T12:48:00.004-04:00

I lay on the ultrasound table waiting for the technician, staring across the room at these:

They are babies in utero. In 3D. I’d never seen that. I’d also never seen any of the endometrium on my uterus--it looked like a teardroppy lump on the gyrating gray of the scan--or the flow of blood in my own ovaries, which was technicolored in red and blue pulsating blobs, swirling like fairies doing mischief in my reproductive system. Now I have.

They, Perhaps, Did Not Forsee This

2009-08-28T10:47:00.003-04:00

Sandwich board on Seventh Avenue in the 20s. 5:53 p.m., August 27, 2009.

"Sometimes I feel like my boobs are attacking me."

2009-08-21T17:00:00.002-04:00

Anonyfriend: Sometimes I feel like my boobs are attacking me.

McBickle: ZOMG. What does this mean.

Anonyfriend: They're pushed up today.

McBickle: Mrs. Ladyfriend says: Holy shit.
Mrs. Ladyfriend: Holy shit. Ain’t never felt that way.

Anonyfriend: And I feel like they're creeping up.

McBickle: You wear ’em high.

Anonyfriend: Just looked down and was like, “Leave me alone.”

Accidental Photo Taken Last Night

2009-08-21T10:18:00.000-04:00

Thy Will Be Done...(Fur)

2009-08-20T17:45:00.004-04:00

Mza just tuned in her IM channel to me:

Mza: Bleeg. Splarg.
McBickle: Bloop

She wanted to show me a possible vacation rental:

Mza: Oy, there are SUCH pretty houses on that site.
McBickle: Oy.
Mza: Like, rehabbed old Cape Cod beach cottages. Love. This one is newer and a little farther from the beach but it's cheap. Is it further or farther, in that context?
McBickle: Farther. Think "far."
Mza: In what context do you think "fur?"
McBickle: Often.
Mza: Please post that on your blog.
McBickle: OK.

'Rushing'

2009-07-29T20:43:00.001-04:00

"...to get to you."

(I swoon.)

Wig Shop on 31st Street

2009-07-17T11:16:00.002-04:00

My Friends Are Iron-Deficient Oversharers

2009-07-09T14:16:00.002-04:00

4:02 p.m.
Mrs. Ladyfriend: I'm experiencing a very strange craving for tuna fish.

4:26 p.m.
Mza: Craving liverwurst.

Dappling

2009-07-08T07:17:00.003-04:00

This morning, 6:29 a.m.

I woke up at 5. My brain isn’t sure what it’s doing. I tried to re-sleep, but my mind wouldn’t quiet down. I was remembering the air last night as I walked home after work. The sun was just starting to go down and the wind was stronger than it’s been and cool and fresh and I remembered smiling and thinking about Spain. Not Spain as a place, but Spain as an idea—“Spain.” I realized I hadn’t felt calm in New York like that in a long time. It was as though I were again feeling air that can only be sensed when I am happy.

It’s a quality of breeze that is twined with the light like bodies in the morning in bed.

I Quote a Woman I Don't Yet Know

2009-07-03T20:54:00.003-04:00

"Today, I feel a great weird excitement welling up in me."

This is a beach in San Sebastian, Spain. I took this last week.

2:36 a.m.

2009-06-10T16:38:00.000-04:00

A storm cracked open the Brooklyn sky two nights in a row; each night I awoke and looked at the time: 2:36 a.m.

Wound

2009-06-06T19:07:00.001-04:00

Pan Pipe My Brain

2009-05-17T17:41:00.004-04:00

Why is that airy-sounding Peruvian flute-pipe instrument de rigueur for New York City street fairs and Southwestern airport soundtracks?

Why does it make my brain feel hollow and make me see everything in lavender laced with geode crystals?

Please stop playing it street fair near my house today, I beg you.

At least now I know I am not alone.

Pine

2009-05-05T10:30:00.000-04:00

When I close my eyes I see a cold pine forest. Not too cold, more the sort of cold that breezes in between trees, tall trees that reach into the dark blue sky and gather at pointed tips as if attracted to one another. The ground in the clearing is dry and a deep breath tastes of pine sap and teal needles.

I keep seeing this when I close my eyes. I’ve been looking for it each time, hoping to enter that calm, chilly woods and stay in it as long as my waking dream will allow. It’s a memory from childhood grown into what I will need to find in my future.

An Unfinished Charcoal at the End of a Tunnel

2009-05-04T21:28:00.001-04:00

Don't Do It

2009-04-09T20:29:00.000-04:00

Monday Morning

2009-04-06T12:03:00.000-04:00

In the past 12 hours I’ve had a budding relationship end, a good friendship begin, a man seek me out on “Missed Connections” on Craigslist, another tell me he loves me, and yet one more punch me as he passed me on his bicycle for no reason other than malice.

The sky is dark with rain and my head is achey and full of the pain and hurt and love of others, taken and offered and shoved at me. I’m considering going into that alternate universe now. You know, crying there a little, as I did to my bagel man this morning, who kindly offered to break in two the man on the bike: “I will snap him in half,” he told me. Thank you, bagel man. I appreciated the physical demonstration of snappage you gave me with your hands.

For Some Reason, I Love This

2009-04-03T17:05:00.001-04:00

Mr. Ladyfriend just called me to say he’ll be in my hood to FedEx something and asked if I wanted to have a drink. So I said, “Wait. Are you sticking around my neighborhood anyway? ‘Cause I’m still at work.”

And he said: “Well, let’s say that if we opened up an alternate universe in which you didn’t exist, I would just Fedex this and go home.”

Where They Lost It

2009-04-02T17:18:00.006-04:00

In honor of the beauty of spring sproinging in high form today, I started asking around on IM where my friends “lost” their straight virginity. You know, locationally. Structure and place. Some people threw in some extra, delicious info, however. Here’s what I’ve gotten so far:

“A tent in Alaska.”

“In a bed in the south of France.”

“On a living room floor of a third party in Virginia.”

“A cabin in the Berkshires. He made use of cornhusker’s lotion as lubricant.”

“Living room, sleeping bag, NYE party. Girl with a glass eye. I win.”

So far, you do. Yes.

More.

2009-04-02T10:57:00.001-04:00

The warmth of the air wending through the wet clouds is making me want to burst through a person-shaped cocoon around my body; I physically want to scream from my arms and out my face.

More.

Excruciatingly

2009-04-01T21:52:00.002-04:00

Two lines from Edmund White’s autobiography, My Lives:

1. Because this did that for me:

“We’re all creatures of habit and every old dog stares reproachfully at whatever disturbs his routine, but inspiration breaks through at exactly these ruptures.”

2. Because prose sometimes expresses a meaning through metaphor and description, but also through the stringing together of words at the same time, and this does that:

“All I was doing was living—excruciatingly—in the remembered moment, not in the perception of the scene before me (the wet pillowcase, the gauze curtains shifting and swelling in the breeze slipping in through the cracked window) but of the beautiful body that my imagination turned like a vase before setting it out to dry.”

Oofy

2009-03-20T13:59:00.001-04:00

I wrote the word "oof" to the Woman With the Red Earrings and she wrote back, “ 'Oof' is my friend’s favorite words.” Well, I thought, okay.

Then she sent me this:

Which was exactly after I told her I felt like the stupid not-smiling smiley face, the ambivalent face on gchat—the one that lets the face fall down the flat line of the mouth. Slanty.

XXX-XXX-XXXX

2009-03-03T10:25:00.003-05:00

I deleted someone’s number this morning. The problem is I remember it anyway, and now it just keeps running through my head. Leave it to My Fake Boyfriend to laugh at me:

My Fake Boyfriend: Hahahaha.

That's kinda funny, you have to admit.

I'm sorry about the meta problem.

But the whole number thing is funny.

I forgot your number! But I remember your number!

Grr.

Also not funny was the woman on the train across from me this morning. Have you ever seen a human who looks two breaths from death? The color of her skin was yellowish-white—not pasty, more made of paste. And her eyes, rimmed in raw red. The bit of hair that peeked out from under her hat was absent of color. Her entire face dragged downward—mouth frowned down, cheeks sweeping her jaw.

I thought about how things end: Human connections, humans. But this is the whole problem: That lady was still alive, and people remain forever connected after they’ve loved or hated each other. I know, maybe this is not a “problem.” But it feels like one today.

“It’s a really nice little forklift."

2009-02-25T16:49:00.002-05:00

The Welder texted me last night. Someone gave him a forklift. I told him that was fucked up. His reply?

“It’s a really nice little forklift. What the fuck are you doing?”

Good point.

Yeah, Sorry

2009-02-23T15:32:00.001-05:00

Just before I fell asleep last night I was thinking about how I feel as though someone has come along and squeezed all the liquid from me that would normally form writing. It’s like someone pressed it all into a glass then took that glass and smashed it on the edge of a table so that all the writing milk ran onto the floor and a cat came along to lick it up but stepped in a shard and cut its paw and left bloody tracks on its way out the door…

Then I fell asleep thinking about how that metaphor was disgusting.

They Even Gave Him Sexy Lighting

2009-02-17T14:21:00.000-05:00

SF for the Fucked Up Text Message Win: iqk

2009-02-15T12:07:00.003-05:00

Night before…2:22 a.m.

Silver Fox: “To you to I was just in a strange abandoned lot it her scary towards comey iqk”

McBickle: “You ok? Your msg was a little garbled.”

Silver Fox: “Yeah I will fill you in tomorrow unless [REDACTED]”

McBickle: “Ha. In bed reading about Freud.”

Next day…11:40 a.m.

Silver Fox: “Oof I am never drinking in a sauna again.”

‘Gambling Is Super Weird’

2009-02-10T12:29:00.001-05:00

So Mr. and Mrs. Ladyfriend went to Vegas. Not by choice, per se. (Cue: Guns blazing! Kidnapped and forced to gamble! Massive casino heist!) Mza and I discussed the oddity of Mr. Ladyfriend in the grossglitz of that crazyland, with his ever-serious face and elegant gestures.

She made it all make sense, however, with this proclamation: “He does skew rat-packy,” she said.

And now from Mrs. Ladyfriend:

Mrs. Ladyfriend: He plays poker, and he played in Vegas. Two nights in a row until like, 4:30 a.m.

McBickle: Oh man.

Mrs. Ladyfriend: But he won money, so that's good.

Mrs. Ladyfriend: He came back, and threw hundreds at me and said, "Buy something frivolous!"

McBickle: Noooooo. Nooooooo.

Mrs. Ladyfriend: Right?! So funny.

McBickle: He WON?

Mrs. Ladyfriend: Yep.

McBickle: Nice!

Mrs. Ladyfriend: Yea. He's really good at poker, and poker is more skill-based, less luck.

McBickle: How much did he win?

Mrs. Ladyfriend: Wellll, the first night, he won $200.

McBickle: Wow.

Mrs. Ladyfriend: But then the second night, he lost $100 of that $200. So for the whole weekend, he's up 100. (I got to keep it.)

Mrs. Ladyfriend: Anyway, it was hilarious. He had such a swagger and he smelled like gin and cigarettes and money.

Mrs. Ladyfriend: I was like, you must shower before you get into bed with me. Then the next night it was the exact opposite.

McBickle: This is killing me.

Mrs. Ladyfriend: He lost $100, some guy mocked him for some bet, and he came home sulking, and like, crawled into bed.

I Worry More About My Other Friends, To Be Honest

2009-02-10T11:21:00.002-05:00

Silver Fox: Hmmm…so I’m logged into my Gmail account I’m using for this new part-time gig, and I noticed myself in the chat window and I started texting myself back and forth. Is that a sign of insanity?

Silver Fox: “And how are you today, Silver Fox?”

“Good, Silver Fox. How are you?”

“Good! What’s new with you?”

“Wish I could say! You?”

“Same!”

It was upsetting to say the least.

UPDATE:

McBickle: Mrs. Ladyfriend says she too has chatted with herself. What is wrong with you people.

Silver Fox: It's perfectly normal, and it won't make you blind.

Stripping Down on a Sunday Eve

2009-02-08T21:30:00.000-05:00

Nothing like the pain of the past. The one you think you left behind as you watched the people grow and live, gain years and wither. I realized today that the 1970s will carry the emotional cues—songs, shorts, TV shows gleaned and weaned in the only early years. And tonight, the M*A*S*H episode where Henry Blake dies in a helicopter over the Asian seas after he was discharged, sent from war to the hearth, the midlands, heartlands, the warmth, the nonwar. I cried for my father, my uncle I will lose. For the pain of warmth and cold, love and goodbye, love and death. I watched aware from the beginning credits that this is the most pain one can provide: childhood, love, death, and connection. I watched it aware. And it hurt.

Goats, Guns, and a Mazda...Mit Commentary

2009-01-23T14:00:00.002-05:00

Nigerian police detain goat over armed robbery

23 Jan 2009 15:40:22 GMT

Source: Reuters

LAGOS, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Police in Nigeria are holding a goat on suspicion of attempted armed robbery.

Vigilantes took the black and white beast to the police saying it was an armed robber who had used black magic to transform himself into a goat to escape arrest after trying to steal a Mazda 323.

"The group of vigilante men came to report that while they were on patrol they saw some hoodlums attempting to rob a car. They pursued them. However one of them escaped while the other turned into a goat," Kwara state police spokesman Tunde Mohammed told Reuters by telephone.

"We cannot confirm the story, but the goat is in our custody. We cannot base our information on something mystical. It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that a human being turned into a goat," he said.

Belief in witchcraft is widespread in parts of Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation. Residents came to the police station to see the goat, photographed in one national newspaper on its knees next to a pile of straw. (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://af.reuters.com/ ) (Reporting by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Katie Nguyen)

------------

But, as One Man in Baghdad points out:

“It’s obvious that you want to catch it unawares with a surprise question, like
that moment in ‘The Dirty Dozen’ when a Nazi cop says, ‘Hello, how are you?’
to the escaped American prisoner who is getting on a city bus.”

Yeah, F Train

2009-01-16T23:58:00.009-05:00

So this guy was watching me as his girlfriend drunkenly collapsed on him on the F train to Brooklyn tonight. He was watching me watch these

WASPY girls who were actually sitting next to two people who you will see after you see

my hand, which I photographed in an attempt to show you that I was not utterly smirking at and photographing

this couple

who were awesomely engaged in an inappropriate lap dance.

Addendum to Below

2009-01-15T20:27:00.002-05:00

I held the metal pole above my head on the 2 train tonight staring at this:

A plane in the shape of a fish. Granted, this one is in the East River, but planes in water seems to be the theme of January 15, 2009. So is survival, which all the passengers did. Motherholyfuck, for good measure.

Nothing Never Happens

2009-01-15T17:38:00.001-05:00

You know you’re having an absurd day when you have just opened “Document 49” in Microsoft Word.

Oh, right. And a plane went down blocks from here into the Hudson River. The helicopters and sirens have been, let’s say, distracting.

And I can’t be the only New Yorker who nearly threw up and burst into tears when she heard the news.

They all seem to have gotten out okay. Imagine going down into that icy water, though, watching it surround your shitty ovoid plane window…holy motherfucking fucking crapping hell.

Back to work.

Onward

2009-01-13T21:38:00.002-05:00

The other night I got a text from someone who I am still figuring out, text-wise. I decided not to respond, but wanted to. Part of me did. Next to me was a fortune cookie. Now, I’m not normally the type to go for signs and signifiers (not true: signifiers: yes) but I thought to myself, quite boldly, in bold-faced thought:

“I will reply if this fortune cookie tells me to in some way.”

I crackle open the plastic, I crack open the toasted cookie. Here was what my fortune said:

“They will be grateful that you call.”

Really.

So I did. And felt so completely good about it. And now I am considering consulting the occult more frequently.

Just now I found an unopened fortune cookie (yes, they are scattered around my kitchen for just such moments). I pondered the cheap plastic wrapping as a possible container to the harbinger of what will happen next, or should, in my life.

I opened it up and broke the cookie. Here was what my fortune said:

“Oops, wrong cookie.”

Live People

2009-01-04T23:54:00.001-05:00

“We choose the dead because of our tie to them, our identification with them. Their helplessness, passivity, vulnerability is our own. We all yearn toward the state of inanition, the condition of harmlessness, where we are perforce lovable and fragile. It is only by a great effort that we rouse ourselves to act, to fight, to struggle, to be heard above the wind, to crush flowers as we walk. To behave like live people.”

—Janet Malcolm, “The Silent Woman”

Satiety

2008-12-24T12:05:00.001-05:00

He brought me a peeled Clementine fanned-out open on a small blue plate.

He Has His Limits

2008-12-15T15:00:00.002-05:00

This is an actual piece of a conversation I had recently with My Fake Boyfriend about a woman he’s been seeing:

“She always rubs my neck and the back of my head. Do you know how much I hate that? I can’t deal with someone always touching the back of my head. How am I supposed to date someone who every time I see her wants me to do, like, isometric neck exercises?”

And Lo, We Remain Poor...For Now

2008-12-15T14:41:00.003-05:00

Mza: I saw a recipe for absinthe cupcakes.
McBickle: Hm.
Mza: Hahaha.
McBickle: Do you have to make them in Williamsburg?
Mza: It kind of negates the whole idea of absinthe as something you drink when you're depressed verging on suicidal.
McBickle: Oh.
Mza: All of a sudden it's in CUPCAKES.
McBickle: I drank it at a party.
Mza: Yeah, it's legal now or whatev, but it should not be in cupcakes. That's going too far.
McBickle: Pretzels?
Mza: Hummus.
McBickle: I'M EATING HUMMUS RIGHT NOW.
Mza: SHUT UP.
McBickle: Actually babaganoush.
Mza: Does it have any liquor in it?
McBickle: But it's that same container so who the fuck knows. I fucking wish it did. Maker's hummus and I die happy.
Mza: Haha.
McBickle: You laugh.
Mza: Maker’s hummus. OMG.
McBickle: What? Who is joking in this conversation?
Mza: Just like a whole series of normal foods with liquor inserted...
McBickle: OKAY.
Mza: Vodka chips.
McBickle: This could make us very, very rich.
Mza: Bailey's soy milk. YUM.
McBickle: Only you'll have to relent on the cupcakes.
Mza: NO. They can have Frangelico though.
McBickle: Campari CupcakesTM.
Mza: Which is basically cake. Yes. OMG.
McBickle: See?
Mza: That would be GOOD.
McBickle: And this is how Mza and McBickle retired.
Mza: I'm going to make some Campari Cupcakes for the Ladyfriends’ thing.
McBickle: Um. OK?
Mza: Test run. If they go well...
McBickle: And if people puke...
Mza: Ha. I wouldn't put in that much. It'd be like a fruitcake.
McBickle: Cranberry Nut Compari Cake.
Mza: I just found a recipe for Campari Cake. But it involves something called "creme anglese." F that.

(To be continued...or, like, not.)

No, I Might Be Screwed

2008-12-14T15:54:00.001-05:00

There is a mostly empty jar of Paul Newman’s tomato sauce on my kitchen counter. A papery label flies off its side.

I removed it from my fridge yesterday. And now I don’t know what to do with it. It occurs to me now I am waiting for a sign of some sort.

The dilemma of the jar is this: Glass must be recycled. Recycled containers must be clean. This container is not clean.

I am aware I can empty it. But I think it its contents are spoiled. I do not want to smell spoiled sauce. And I do not want to just drop it in the trash, because it must be recycled.

It will tell me what to do soon. I hope.

It's Over Now

2008-12-13T15:15:00.002-05:00

There is screaming outside. Possibly playing, but suddenly too adult-voiced to be playing. A dog is barking. I ignore the screaming. This is Brooklyn: screaming happens.

I look out the window. There is a woman in a parka writhing on the ground. She is the one that is screaming. A brown dog in a blue jacket is barking and circling her. An older woman is circling the woman on the ground and the dog. The woman on the ground makes gestures to stand, quiets down, then screams again. The barking is ongoing. It’s mesmerizing, this scene, which has been going on quite a long time now, if only because the older woman does nothing. She does nothing to help the woman on the ground, who is clearly mentally challenged.

“Get the dog away from her, retard!” someone shouts from what I assume is my building, because I think I recognize the nasally voice as belonging to my downstairs’ neighbor, the one who screams at her kids a lot. Hm, it’s true, I realize. Getting the dog under control would be a positive first step.

Only later do I secretly enjoy the fact that my neighbor called the caretaker, the non-retarded one, “retard.”

And So It Is.

2008-12-08T23:22:00.003-05:00

While I'm not one to be big into horoscopes, I read them occasionally with a critical eye, as I sometimes do poetry, literature, criticism, philosophy. So, this:

"Aries (Mar. 21-Apr. 19)
You are a squirrel. As such, you do not understand why your forest seems to be exploding. You are very concerned."

Well, fuck. Now I am. Grand.

Sleep--It's What I Do Not Get

2008-12-04T16:29:00.003-05:00

"Choice--it's the disease of modernity."

This was said in a luscious episode of Radiolab.

The Damning Photos Were Behind the Tame Photos in an Album

2008-11-27T10:43:00.005-05:00

I just woke up from fantastically creative dreams--lush and gorgeously Victorian settings, strange objects, odd and damning photos, a boy who walked on his hands in a desert country, a 1,000-page dissertation I'd written about women/the ghost world/ something much more concrete--I forget now. The kind of dreams that make you feel interesting and intrigued, filled with men from the past lounging on chairs and disciplinary women teachers, large architectural spaces and new filigreed ideas to discover in them.

It’s a day I’d like to stay and write, but I have to go prepare for Thanksgiving. And I am thankful. There is so much to be grateful for, and that is clearer every year.

Enjoy the day, everyone. The sky is sandstone blue.

(Also, a nice way to give today: City Harvest.)

Absalon

2008-11-20T15:21:00.005-05:00

I showed up earlier than my host. Everywhere there were canvases: draped over a bed, splayed across tables, floors, walls. Sloshes of color, occasional nude photos. And then I noticed the view: Half-height windows to the ceiling on a corner looking out over Central Park and the city to the left and right and ahead from the 31^st floor.

“Do you mind if we play the video again?”

Across from the black leather couches on which we sunk was a flat-screen showing a naked woman doing a kind of gymnastic dance, creating art as her body hit the paper with paint. (Yes.)

“No, go ahead,” I said. There were two guys, both middle-aged-ish, one heavily haired and bearded. Suited.

“It’s called ‘movement art.’ ”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I see that. She’s…moving. And making...art.”

One of the men laughed, one pretended not to hear me. Or did not hear me.

The evening wore better than this though, as I wandered through the “salon” to which I’d been invited. During formal introductions I learned that among the comic illustrators, sex bloggers, and one city planner was one right-wing bigwig for a former (still) bigwig in government. When I talked near him later, I found him to be shouty and spitty. Not about politics, just in general. Shouty. And spitty.

I was at some point in the thrall of a short young man with misanthropic tendencies. We spoke a lot about Jews, about being Jewish, about many things Jewy. And then there was this:

“I had surgery while awake recently.”

“What?” he leapt.

“I had a tumor removed from…here,” I told him as I touched the spot.

“I just got a boner,” he said.

We laughed and laughed and laughed.

Later he made a gas chamber joke. Which left me floored and breathless and for some reason led me to hug him. The irreverence was charming and disgusting at once.

In retrospect, I only remember one piece of art from all the crammed canvases. A terrible tiny painting of a monkey across from the toilet. It had a red background. Awful.

Cutting Through It

2008-11-12T17:51:00.004-05:00

I cut Ladyfriend’s hair last night.

In the bathtub.

After a series of bourbons, neat.

I also cut my finger.

Damn, Ladyfriend has some lush, thick hair.

Lushladyfriend.

(Lushes.)

Also? This lamp? I met a composed person beneath it who radiates sex. I tried to think of another word to describe what he radiates, but it’s “sex.” Sort of like sexy, but dirtier.

Things Take Time to Understand

2008-11-10T23:04:00.001-05:00

After a couple of years of knowing him I finally had a word for the color of his hair.

It is gunmetal silver, black and gray, shiny and shimmery, watery and cold. It sways like seaweed in a tender surf.

“It’s like mercury,” I said.

“Quicksilver,” he replied.

And Now.

2008-11-05T01:43:00.002-05:00

Cheering in the streets at 1:42 a.m.

It’s honking from garbage trucks—I hugged the men who disembarked from one—they honk still blocks away, cheers rising up to meet them. I remember the thrill of Clinton at 18. It’s different. We’re all older now, even the young ones. It’s real and terrifying for its possibilities, good, bad, opaque.

So we wait and see.

A Post That Says Something, But Boringly

2008-10-28T23:29:00.000-04:00

Why I don’t mark pages of passages that strike me when I find them, I’ll never know. I’m reading Susan Orlean’s “The Orchid Thief,” and I can’t find the passage where she says, in effect, how jealous she is of people who find an overwhelming obsession in life. How it may make no sense on the outside, but that it’s a way, for the ones who find it, to pass the time.

Pass the time…how horrific and perfectly sensible.

I was going to post a photo of her infamous ghost orchid, but the ones I found, they scare the crap out of me.

Words of Mza

2008-10-24T17:08:00.003-04:00

Mid-IM, Mza produces my most favoritely modified thought of the day. In stages:

Mza: I was thinking tho: life is good.

Mza: Kind of.

Mza: Even though it's bad.

Somebody Take Away My Vicodin

2008-10-21T10:58:00.002-04:00

Does it ever strike you that you didn’t know you’d stopped moving/growing/outward-expanding and suddenly you find yourself, your mind, your heart, whatever else there is, stretching like a microscopic creature with shifting arms/legs/appendages that move in gooey ways and seem not to have clear edges, but at the same time they are bounded by a light plant-like cellulose structure that holds them all together, attached to the central animal, a core creature that is now able to reach farther than it had before?

If you pay attention to how those reaching arms and untangling legs feel, I wonder if you'd feel, as I do, a glowy warmth, an ease, a kind of excitement, but not excitement in the electric sense—more in the way a flower might feel as it blooms. Subtle but intense. Soft.

In Pain, 7:02 a.m.

2008-10-18T07:02:00.005-04:00

I am awake, briefly I hope, while the sky intensifies with navy and the last narcotic has worn down while the next pill digests inside my stomach.

In yesterday’s midafternoon, a surgeon lay me down on my side and surrounded my back with blue papery sheets. He cut into me around my shoulder blade, which I registered as an unsettling unfeeling after prick after prick of lidocaine had made me numb, mostly. I felt the tearing and what often seemed like ripping, imagined the thick of skin he had pulled away to cut beneath it, but it was the wandering drip of what I knew must be blood down under my armpit, curling onto my breast, that made me deeply uneasy, acutely attended to my mortality.

When the doctor was done, a nurse wiped away my upper back and allowed me to turn over a bit. I saw a C of dried brown blood matching the curve of my upper breast. Another nurse pointed to it for the first to wipe, and after he’d removed the arc without deleting its end point—a blackish drop—I felt repulsed and triumphant, both at once.

ZKDVC

2008-10-10T12:35:00.003-04:00

This is an illuminated eye test. It hangs in a local Brooklyn bar.

It reminds me of Soviet-era Hungary, but that could also be because I am reading Tibor Fischer’s Under the Frog:

“Gyuri was trying to enjoy his sojourn at the hindquarters' headquarters with extracts from these books, but although the idea had been highly pleasing, the reality wasn't as satisfactory. The Communists couldn't even hack it as toilet paper.”

Maybe it’s the “HVORK” line, maybe it’s all the “Z”s, but maybe it’s the font itself, Stalinist and steady, hunkered-down but fading. A little too steely to work well as toilet paper.

My Morning Train Ride Just Got Rappier

2008-09-19T16:08:00.001-04:00

"Two white kids with Dutch accents drop rhymes about Frank Lloyd Wright and rhyme Olafur Eliasson with 'you lyin' son.'"

(Thanks, NY Mag.)

The Longer I Stare...

2008-09-18T14:48:00.001-04:00

...the more insane these vaginas become.

Goodbye, again.

2008-09-11T10:32:00.000-04:00

Testing the “Tribute in Light” last week. (Joe Woolhead/Silverstein Properties.) Via David Dunlap's City Room entry.

Skewiff

2008-09-03T15:32:00.005-04:00

Things to say, but no gusto to say them presently. So here is a photo of a building I just walked past--it is at an amazing angle, which is hard to read here, but maybe you can see it if you take in the square buildings at the left. Because the one at the right is skewed, wonky, tilted in its construction so the walls are not at 90 degree angles, but at maybe more like 70. Look at the wall on the farthest right. That's not fading perspective, that's just some fucked up architecture.

In other news, I hate Duane Reade. So do these people.

'Anus.' 6:37 p.m., 8.26.08, 7th Avenue.

2008-08-28T10:40:00.001-04:00

Breaking: Crazy-Eyed Niece Hates Apples, Loves Bananas

2008-08-25T11:45:00.005-04:00

Hates apples...

loves bananas.

Tropical Storm Fay, Indian River Lagoon, Florida

2008-08-19T18:31:00.001-04:00

(Matthew Ratajczak/Associated Press)

Enlightening!

2008-08-15T14:41:00.003-04:00

Russian Judge Rules to Allow Sexual Harassment

www.telegraph.co.uk

A Russian advertising executive who sued her boss for sexual harassment lost her case after a judge ruled that employers were obliged to make passes at female staff to ensure the survival of the human race.

The unnamed executive, a 22-year-old from St Petersburg, had been hoping to become only the third woman in Russia's history to bring a successful sexual harassment action against a male employer.

She alleged she had been locked out of her office after she refused to have intimate relations with her 47-year-old boss.

"He always demanded that female workers signalled to him with their eyes that they desperately wanted to be laid on the boardroom table as soon as he gave the word," she earlier told the court. "I didn't realise at first that he wasn't speaking metaphorically."

The judge said he threw out the case not through lack of evidence but because the employer had acted gallantly rather than criminally.

"If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children," the judge ruled.

Since Soviet times, sexual harassment in Russia has become an accepted part of life in the office, work place and university lecture room.

According to a recent survey, 100 per cent of female professionals said they had been subjected to sexual harassment by their bosses, 32 per cent said they had had intercourse with them at least once and another seven per cent claimed to have been raped.

Eighty per cent of those who participated in the survey said they did not believe it possible to win promotion without engaging in sexual relations with their male superiors.

Women also report that it is common to be browbeaten into sex during job interviews, while female students regularly complain that university professors trade high marks for sexual favours.

Only two women have won sexual harassment cases since the collapse of the Soviet Union, one in 1993 and the other in 1997.

Human rights activists say that Russian women remain second-class citizens and are subjected to some of the highest levels of domestic abuse in the world.

Irony!

2008-08-10T15:55:00.003-04:00

Did you know that the director of "House of Wax," the 1953 3-D hit, was blind in one eye? Monocular!

Beauty Hands

2008-08-10T15:53:00.002-04:00

Last night, Third Avenue, Brooklyn. 10:48 p.m. Bodega window.

Gay Day

2008-08-08T11:12:00.004-04:00

“Excuse me, is this neighborhood called something?”

I pluck a white iPod headphone from one ear and try to quickly assess what neighborhood we are in while also sizing up if the man speaking to me is attempting to:

a) pick me up

b) kill me.

We are on 23^rd between Sixth and Seventh, so I say, “Um, not really. Oh, wait. Chelsea. Yeah, I guess this is Chelsea.”

The man, a handsome, 30-something, possibly Latino guy, says, “Is this a particularly gay neighborhood?”

He has a small black camera strung around his neck. We are still walking.

“Really?” I ask. “It’s Chelsea. It’s the gay neighborhood in New York.” Suddenly I am worried this guy is some sort of psychotic homophobe. Either that or he is gay. “Um, do you want it to be?”

“Sure. I mean, I’m gay,” he says. [Breathe out.] “And I was sort of blown away a block back by these guys in front of a gym…”

We laugh. All this time, we’re still walking.

“So yeah—Chelsea is the center of gay in New York,” I tell him. “You know, it’s funny, I was just listening to Dan Savage’s podcast…” I wonder why I am telling him this.

“Who’s that?” he asks.

I also begin to wonder what super-straight gay planet this man fell from.

“You know, Dan Savage—Savage Love. Columnist. The Stranger…?”

Somewhere along the way, he mentions he is from California. I babble about weekly papers, the Village Voice. I try to recall the name of a weekly in California; I say something about Dan Savage being gay and answering a lot of questions about gay sex, which he was just doing in my very ears. I am stymied that he does not know Savage Love. I keep talking about gay things—gay neighborhood, gay sex columnist, gay, gay, gay. We reach TekServe, and the man stops and says: “Ah! Here is what I’ve been looking for all along!”

He thrusts out his hand: “I’m Daniel. Have a fun time!”

“I’m McBickle,” I say, smiling. “You too.”

I continue on to the subway, pondering his signoff, curious that I seem to have introduced some core concepts of gay popular culture to this gay man in a random encounter along a gay half a city block. Gay.

Sorority ‘Fatwah’!

2008-08-07T11:28:00.000-04:00

From Eric Lipton’s NYT article on Bruce Ivins, accused (and now dead) anthrax killer—about the scientist’s e-mails:

"They provide glimpses into the personality of a man obsessed with a sorority that he first encountered while an undergraduate, asserting in an e-mail message that the women’s group was waging a 'fatwah' against him."

Delving

2008-07-29T18:14:00.003-04:00

I wrote something today. When I was done, I realized how much pleasure I’d felt during it. I thought about how I’d crafted sentences, rolling the words through my fingers, the ideas like paint I needed to smear on a screen. A very sensual, driving process.

Then I realized how much the remembrance of that visceral feeling of writing reminds me of drawing. I love to draw with charcoal. Because it feels like sculpture. I love to rub my hands into the paper, creating figures with depth and light.

Words and pencils and shapes and thoughts all create a form. Between the brain and the hands, I make something. And this is satisfying.

Really, it's all very much the same to me as sex.

A Simple Story, Told Half Visually

2008-07-28T11:06:00.002-04:00

I once kissed a man down these stairs. His head was shaved and felt sturdy in my hands, and his tongue was harsh.

These flowers are across the street.

Summery. Frothy.

2008-07-26T16:07:00.002-04:00

Mr. Ladyfriend's beer was perfect.

What's This Girl's Problem?

2008-07-24T10:25:00.002-04:00

NZ judge backs girl over 'embarrassing' name

(CNN) -- A New Zealand judge has made a 9-year-old girl a ward of the court so that her name can be changed from Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii, the country's national news agency reported Thursday.

Family Court Judge Rob Murfitt listed a series of unusual names that New Zealand parents had given their children, and said he was concerned that such strange monikers would create hurdles for them as they grew up.

"It makes a fool of the child and sets her up with a social disability and handicap," the New Zealand Press Association quoted the judge as saying.

Among the names Murfitt cited: twins named Benson and Hedges -- after a brand of cigarettes; Violence; and Number 16 Bus Shelter.

Some parents had named children after six-cylinder Ford cars, the news agency reported.

The Registrar General of Births, Deaths and Marriages said in a statement that it had rejected names including Fish and Chips, Yeah Detroit, Stallion, Twisty Poi -- a staple food in Polynesian cuisine -- and Sex Fruit.

A lawyer for Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii said the girl is so embarrassed by her name that friends know her as "K."

Last month, an judge in the U.S. state of Illinois allowed a school bus driver to legally change his first name to "In God" and his last name to "We Trust."

But an appeals court in the state of New Mexico ruled against a man -- named Variable -- who wanted to change his name to a two-word phrase that contains a four-letter expletive and expresses opposition to censorship.

I'm Homophonic

2008-07-21T15:12:00.000-04:00

Today I have written “think” where I meant “thing”

and

“hear” where I meant “here.”

The needle is officially off the record.